


When the Cradle Falls

by Feral_Fic_Writer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Dean Needs A Hug, Dom/Sub/Big/Little/Owner/Pet AU, Eventual Dean Winchester/Benny Lafitte, Hurt Dean, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Infantilism, John Winchester is a bounty hunter, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Like all my fics there will be years between updates, M/M, More Relationships to be added, More characters to be added, More tags to be added, Nothing supernatural in this AU, Touch-Starved, eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2018-10-26 18:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10792446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feral_Fic_Writer/pseuds/Feral_Fic_Writer
Summary: "Father knows best" is the first rule in Power Dom John Winchester's parental handbook and he's been convinced since each of his sons births that Dean is a Dom, Sam a Sub.In a world where designations aren't determined until a person's 16th year and solidified until the age of 20, what happens when John's convictions don't manifest accordingly?And what will the cost be to Dean? The son raised to be a Dom, who's never wanted anything more than to make his Daddy happy.





	1. Sweet Sixteen

At 5:30 Dean’s eyes automatically shot open. He rolled over carefully, wincing, and sat up with a sigh. It took five minutes for him to pull on sweats and his hoodie. Bending to get his running shoes on he ignored the way his eyes watered. Once dressed and finally ready to go, he ran a hand through still sleep-tousled bangs.

_Now for the really fun part._

He crossed the few feet of the small bedroom, over to the other cot where Sam was burrowed in his sleeping bag quietly snoring. Setting a foot on the aluminum frame, he jiggled his leg making the whole bed shake.

“Rise and shine, Sammy!” He whispered loudly with as much fake cheer as he could muster.

“Nuhhhh.” Sam’s eyes stayed closed. He groaned and wiggled deeper into his nylon cocoon. ”Guh awah…”

“Come on lazy butt.” Dean increased his volume as much as he dared without risking waking John. Which, given the thinness of the apartment walls and how lightly their dad slept, was still pretty quiet. “Get your ass out of bed!”

“Stop, ya jerk!” Sam whined when his personal morning earthquake failed to subside.

“I’ll stop, when you stop being a bitch. Come on, get up! Dad said ten miles. We have to get going if you want to get done and get to school on time!”

Roused now but still not rising, Sam rubbed hands far larger than any twelve-year-old had a right to over sleep crusted eyes.

“Fuck Dad!” Sam sniped in sleep-slurred false bravado. He sat up enough to shove Dean’s foot off his bed. “He’s passed out. And by my estimation he’s not going to be up before ten at the earliest."

Having declared this with the greatest confidence, he fell dramatically back onto the cot’s thin foam camping mattress and snuggled back down into his bag. “I’ll put a wet washcloth on my training clothes and make sure they’re damp and stained in all the right places before catching the bus.

“But right now, let me go back to sleep.”

Hearing Sam cuss at their father was a knife to Dean’s gut, but he felt even sicker knowing he was largely to blame for the attitude. In the weeks John had been gone he’d taken it too easy on Sam; given him a pass and let him sleep in more than once.

 _Dad was right_ , he thought. Sam wouldn’t be having so many issues with their father if he’d done a decent job making him tow the line while he was away.

Though it hurt his stiff shoulders Dean grabbed the bottom of Sam’s sleeping bag, his oversized feet with it, and pulled them both off the bed. Sam hit the ground with a heavy “thunk!” This and the squawk he made when he landed would have surely woken John if he’d been sleeping sober.

Before Sam could scramble up, Dean was on him. He sat on Sam’s chest, each knee pinning a twiggy bicep. Every buck of his brother’s body made him wince but he stayed put. He might not have been too much taller, despite their age difference, but Sam was a beanpole. Dean used his slightly greater weight to his advantage until Sam finally stopped thrashing.

As soon as he stilled, Dean leaned down close to his flushed face. “Watch your mouth, Sam! You need to respect Dad as our father and as a Dom.”

Sam snorted in disgust, but when his vision cleared enough to register Dean’s pained expression, his own shifted from fury to something sadly resigned.

“Come on Dean, he’s hardly a good Dom and even less of a father.”

“Sam…”

He cut Dean off before he could mount his inevitable defense. “Seriously, Dean? After what he did to you last night?”

“What?”

Heat filled Dean’s cheeks. Sam had arrived home from the library five minutes after John released him from his punishment and he thought he’d managed well enough to hide it.

As if reading his thoughts Sam shook his head. “I came home early. I heard him hitting you through his bedroom door… So, I went back outside and listened, waited until I heard you come out of his room.”

“It was my fault, Sammy, I…”

“God, dude, just stop!” Sam’s expression was immediately furious again. “Whatever his reasoning you didn’t deserve it!

“I mean, seriously, Dean? You’ve been holding everything together without him for the last six weeks! You even dropped out again to work so we could keep this place!”

The praise couched in Sam’s angry words set a warmth curling in Dean’s low belly that made him both scared and angry. Even so, he did his best to keep his voice even.

“I messed up, it’s his job as a dad and a Dom to correct. Besides, I need to know how it feels to be a sub if I’m ever going to be a good Dom.”

Sam rolled his eyes at John’s parroted phrases.

“Dean, a good Dom knows what punishments motivate best and uses them wisely! A good Dom knows what limits are and never exceeds them!”

Seeing the way Dean’s face closed off at this, he couldn’t help but keep pushing.

“And tell me too, big brother... If he’s training you to be so ‘good’ for your future Subs, what kind of aftercare did our ‘oh so great’ Dom dad give you?”

Dean’s eyes widened and he rocked back like he’d been slapped. Beneath him Sam watched the tumult of emotion roll over his face and braced himself for the blow up. It never came though. Instead, Dean pushed to his feet and stormed out of their room.

Sam sat there blinking for a few moments before he finally growled, “Fuck!” Then he peeled himself out of his sleeping bag, threw on his gear, and headed out to chase Dean down.

* * *

The cold pre-dawn air hadn’t helped Dean’s aching at all. So he was glad by the time Sam finally caught up to him he’d managed to run out the worst of his stiffness; just reaching a place in his pace where he was hardly limping at all. He was even happier when Sam kept his mouth shut and didn’t say anything else: just shot him bitchface #12 and then fell silently in step beside him.

It was for the best really. After all, talking didn’t do shit for anything as far as Dean had ever experienced. And nothing Sam said was going to convince him he hadn’t earned what John gave him. _‘Father knows best’_ , that was how they’d been raised.

_And as far as fucking aftercare, well…_

Dean pushed down the new deep ache in his chest that had suddenly bloomed alongside his burning lungs.

_I’m a Dom, I don’t need it._

Not that he’d been officially designated or had really shown any of the usual signs of presenting. _Yet._ But for as long as he could remember John had told him he’d known what he was from the moment he was born.

Of course, as Dean had gotten older and the severity of the discipline increased, their dad had told him too that this was only natural Dom dynamics. More than once he’d finished a punishment saying, _“Someday Dean, you’ll best me in a beating and that’ll be it… You’ll head off on your own then.”_

He’d repeated this again last night, in fact, but this time, unlike those before, he’d added:

_“Unless of course you wanna try taking Samuel away with you. I know that might feel natural the way I’ve raised you. But believe me, you could do a lot better in a sub than your brother. Though that’s not entirely his fault… is it?”_

Dean would never admit to anyone how this upset him. It was a worse punishment than the strap: the terrible panic that filled him when he thought about leaving his dad, of losing his family, and of failing John and Sam both.

Casting a sidelong look at Sammy, Dean fervently hoped for his sake, that their father was wrong in at least one of his predictions. That somehow Sam would designate and eventually present as a Switch, not a Sub. Especially since everyone said Switches had the easiest time of things. Not to mention that as pig-headed as Sam could be, Dean feared for what might happen to him if he fell in with the wrong kind of Dom…

The steam of his breath punctuating the chill February air, Sam was lost in his stride now, giving Dean time to really study him. Pig-headed or not, the kid was really something. Watching his younger brother run he felt the familiar quiet pride, along with the uncomfortable and also familiar pang of envy.

Sammy was so good at everything; school, music, making friends, pretty much anything he put his mind to. And no matter how much he pissed and moaned about training, just like everything else, it came easy. Even missing a few weeks of regular running, this morning, as the miles passed, Sam held his pace with no problem.

He, on the other hand struggled and had to work hard at everything it seemed. Harder lately too, it felt like. Dean’s shoulders and his ass suddenly zinged him anew as if to remind him what the biggest reasons for this were...

_Today at least._

_Okay… Enough of the pity party._

Gritting his teeth, Dean shifted his gaze back to the road. He could hear John’s voice in his head yelling at him to “focus!” It was tough right now though… More so than usual. A lot more. The way he hurt, letting John down, the words Sam had thrown at him. These all rolled into one big tangled mess inside him. It made him want to just curl up on the side of the road and cry.

_No tears for soldiers… and that’s what you are. So suck it up and stop being such a goddamn baby._

This became his mantra for the rest of the run, _Not a baby,_ silently chanted to the beat of his tattered sneakers against frosty asphalt.

* * *

 

In the nine months they’d lived there, Dean didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to see their crumbling apartment complex come into view. He was relieved too that by the time they got back, he and Sam had made not only their ten miles, but also something resembling peace again.

“I call first shower,” Sam grinned and bolted through the apartment door.

“Of course,” Dean panted. “You go first. But only because you need as much time as a girl to make yourself presentable.”

“That’s sexist!”

“Bitch…”

“Even more so, Jerk!”

Dean ignored Sam flipping him the finger and went to make breakfast. Once in the kitchen he opened the fridge. Counting the eggs he sighed. “Looks like it’s oatmeal for you again, Deano.”

He put a pot onto boil and pulled out a frying pan.

“Dean… Shit!”

“What?”

Dean blinked rapidly. A jolt of anxiety sent his heart into overtime when it took him a minute to figure out where he was. Sam stood next to him dressed in his jeans but still barefoot and shirtless. His long, damp hair hung in his eyes as he turned the heat down on the overflowing saucepan and tossed the smoking skillet into the sink.

“Sammy?...”

“Hey, man… What’s going on? I get out of the shower, smell smoke, and find you standing next to the stove like a zombie while everything’s going up in flames.” Sam pushed his bangs out of the way, his normally fox-like eyes wide and worried.

“Are you okay, bro?”

Sam set a hand on his shoulder; Dean cringed but didn’t pull away. As soon as Sam saw him flinch he'd lightened the pressure and while his first impulse had been to shrug it off, the tender touch felt nice…

_Too nice._

_God, Sam’s hand is so warm._

Dean lost himself in it for a few seconds but then pulled himself back, suddenly realizing his brother was still waiting anxiously for an explanation. Unfortunately his tongue was thick in his mouth and words seemed elusive.

“I… I dunno… Just kinda spaced out, I guess.”

Sam continued to look at him expectantly but Dean didn’t have it in him to say anything else. When Sam finally realized he wasn’t going offer more, he eased him over to one of their mismatched kitchen chairs.

Dean didn’t fight this like he usually would, just sat down slowly, careful of his bruised ass. It was only when he saw Sam studying him with a frown that something inside boomeranged him back to normal. He shrugged his shoulders despite the bite and shook Sam’s hand off.

“I’m fine.”

Sam stepped back but not before pulling out bitch-face #7, showing him he was less than convinced.

“Are you sure? You were acting weird. I mean, you seemed really out of it.”

“I said I’m fine… Probably just low blood sugar or something from the run… You know how that happens sometimes.”

“Yeah, maybe…”

Dean was grateful Sam left it at that. Neither of them seeing fit to mention that when John had unexpectedly shown back up last night he’d crashed their dinner and had eaten the lion’s share of their meager meal.

 _Speaking of meals._ Dean’s eyes shot over to the sink. “Shit Sammy… The eggs.” There were still a few left, but those needed to be saved for John.

Sam was at the stove dumping oats from a dollar store canister into the now simmering saucepan. “It’s okay… I’ve been thinking about going vegetarian lately. Besides, oatmeal’s good for the heart.”

“You’re a weird little fuck, Sam.”

There was nothing but warmth in Dean’s tone when he said this. Sam snorted in response and waved him off when he started to rise to help. “You love that about me. That’s why I’m your favorite brother.”

“You’re my only brother…” Dean shot back. “So it’s not like I have a choice.”

Sam smiled, clearly pleased that their banter indicated everything was getting back to normal. He turned away from Dean and back to the task at hand, puttering around the kitchen. He pulled paper bowls out of the cupboards, the last of the milk from the fridge. From one of the drawers Sam drew out plastic spoons and pilfered packets of diner sugar.

Dean watched all this feeling content for the first time that morning. Enough so that he made a happy hum when Sam set a steaming bowl down in front of him.

“Like that service, do you?”

Dean looked up shocked and Sam gave him an unexpected and knowing wink. It took him aback, the sudden thought that maybe this was finally the start of his presenting as a Dom. It would make sense, the unfamiliar, strange warmth that had suddenly flooded his chest at Sam serving him.

He was so lost in his wonderings Dean didn’t notice Sam slip out of the kitchen. He barely registered his return either until Sam was at his side, setting a smallish cardboard box on the table.

Dean’s eyes shifted back and forth between the box and Sam.

“What’s this?”

The expectant look on Sam’s face turned to disbelief. He thunked down in his chair. “Are you serious?”

Blood rushed into Dean’s cheeks when Sam huffed out an exasperated sigh. “Look, I know we Winchester’s aren’t big on traditions, but do the words _'Happy Birthday'_ mean anything to you?”

Dean’s eyes shot over to the fridge where an auto store calendar was taped to the door, its boxed days filled with scrawls of his work schedule and all Sam’s school activities. “Huh, look at that,” he muttered, locating the date. “Uh… I guess I kind of forgot.”

Once Sam hit ten and John stated there’d be no more holiday nonsense, the only special days he paid any attention to was Sam’s birthday and the anniversary of their Mother’s death.

“Don’t know how you could forget your own birthday. And I thought you’d be so jazzed for this one. After all, it’s your Sweet Sixteen!” Sam sang, “all ripe and ready for legal designation!”

“Yeah...” Dean hoped his voice held more enthusiasm than he felt. It was confusing: he should have been just as excited as Sam said, but at the realization of the date and its implications he was seized instead with a deep trepidation.

Fortunately it appeared he’d done well enough masking his feelings because Sam just grinned and pushed the box at him before tucking into his breakfast.

“Go on, open it! It’s not gonna bite you,” Sam said around a mouthful of oatmeal.

Dean dropped his eyes from his brother’s eager gaze and reached for the box.

 _Sixteen. Today…_ The start of what was generally an intense two-year presenting period: the first half of the four-year process of a person growing into their designation. Dean’s chest was suddenly so crowded with emotions he feared his ribs might crack. God, it was going to suck if this was the start of his presenting and he had to spend the next two years fighting off these kinds of feels.

Despite how clearly excited Sam was for him to open his present, Dean paused to take a few bites of his own breakfast while he put himself in order. However, he wished he hadn’t eaten anything the moment he pulled the flaps of battered cardboard back and saw what was inside.

His stomach seized so hard it shot the little bit of oatmeal he’d eaten right back up into his throat. As much as he tried to it hold back, he audibly choked. His expression must have looked as horrified as he felt because Sam jumped up immediately.

“Oh, shit, Dean!” Long fingers reached into the box and plucked up a small blue stuffed teddy bear.

“That’s not really for you! I mean it is, but it isn’t.” Sam scrabbled clumsily to pull out what was obviously a book wrapped in newspaper. “Here! This is yours.”

In his haste to alleviate the situation he ripped the colored comics section off to reveal a brand new book, _Little Beside Me: A Guide to Being the Very Best Daddy Dom_. Clearly seeing the title didn’t ease Dean as much as he'd hoped it would, because Sam immediately went into ramble mode.

“I guess I really messed up, huh? I didn’t even think how it might look when you opened it… I mean, especially since we all know you’re going to be a Dom.”

Allowing Sam’s awkward apologies to wash over him, Dean remained silent. He let Sam flounder, too busy focusing on trying to regulate his breathing. He kept his eyes on the cover of the book in Sam’s hands, determined not to look over at the small, lost looking bear, lying on its side just at the edge of his periphery.

“But, come on, Dean… I know you’re not going to be a Power Dom like Dad is. You’re a Service Dom if there ever was one, and well…” Sam set the book on the table to run his hands through his hair. “I mean, the way you’ve taken care of me… ever since…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

Dean had recovered himself somewhat, so potent the relief that Sam didn’t think he was a Little. But from his perspective, based on their father’s opinions regarding designations, the possibility of him being a Daddy Dom wasn’t really all that much better.

It was like Sam could read his thoughts. “Dean, it’s not such a bad thing if you’re not just like Dad. In fact, personally I think it’d be a good thing. A real good thing. For lots of reasons.

“Not the least of which, Parental Doms are super important for society.

“And I can’t think of anyone better than you to be the person for someone innocent and vulnerable to put their whole trust in. Someone they could count on to look out for them… protect them. ”

A chanced glance at Sam’s face made it hard for Dean to breathe again: the kid was so fucking earnest.

“What about the bear then?” he tipped his head towards it but refused to look.

Leave it to Sam: he picked the bear up and offered it and Dean was compelled to open his hands. However, he made no move to take it. This didn’t matter though, because his brother pressed the squishy, fuzzy body into his fingers.

Dean knew he had to have imagined the electric jolt he felt all the way up into his shoulders the second his calloused fingertips registered its fur.

_So soft._

The sudden urge to clutch it to his chest and protect it hit him almost as hard as the memories.

He had emerged from their housefire with a stuffed dog. But it was lost and never replaced their first year out on the road: left behind in haste at some diner. And while he’d never gotten another stuffed animal, John had given Sam a plush turtle later that same year. It had fared a bit better than his dog, the turtle hanging around until it was purposely destroyed by their dad in a fit, not long after Sam turned four.

Pushing these painful recollections aside, Dean finally made himself look down at the bear in his hands. Black, glass eyes gazed woefully back up at him. He traced a finger over it’s nose, rubbing across tight stitching.

“It’s a good quality. Not cheap ‘Made in China’ shit… I traded some tutoring with one of my classmate’s moms for it. She makes em.”

“I got it for you because…” Sam’s voice was embarrassed and hesitant. “You know, we travel so much… I figured if you had something nice on hand and found someone you were ever interested in… Well, it’d be good to have something to offer them that didn’t come from a dollar store…

Not that you’d… I mean, it’s different now that you’re working... But in a pinch…” Sam shook his head, his smooth cheeks painted deep pink.

“Shit.”

It stirred something deep in Dean that Sam had even thought about him courting anyone. That he was in essence, with this gift, telling him he could look beyond their broken family for someone to care about…

 _Not that I need his permission._ However, this reminder did nothing to diminish the achy warmth in his belly.

Tipping his head forward, Sam hid behind the blind of his shaggy bangs and sighed. “I didn’t mean to overstep, Dean. And I’m sorry if it didn’t come off the way I intended.” he chuckled uncomfortably. “God… I can’t believe I made you think I thought you were a Little.

“Good thing you only have one birthday a year, since I clearly suck at giving presents.”

“Nah, it’s okay, Sam…”

Dean couldn’t keep his thumbs from stroking over the short, plush fur of the bear. Nor could he hold himself back from doing what he could to alleviate how badly Sam was feeling about his failed ‘birthday surprise.’

Any good Dom would have done the same. His eyes shifted from the homemade bear to the crisp new book and he felt a pang of remorse at some of the second hand gifts he’d scrounged for Sammy himself over the years when money was tight. Clearly Sam had put a lot of thought into his gift. Had wanted to please him.

“You did good, Sammy. It’s a nice gift. I really appreciate it.” Dean brought out one of his best smiles and hoped it was convincing. “Of course I should have guessed you’d get me a book.” He grinned, and this time it felt much more real.

“And this little guy…” Dean set the bear back down into the box. His hand automatically gave it a gentle pat on his head before pulling away. “Because of him, I now get to call you Uncle Sam…”

Sam groaned dramatically at yet another nickname.

Dean laughed. Then he picked up the book studying the cover a moment before setting it back in the box too. “But don’t get too excited, _Uncle Sam_. If I do designate as a Daddy Dom, there’s not going to be any nieces or nephews for you for a long, long time.”

“But you will find out now. Won’t you?”

Dean would have shrugged if his shoulders hadn't warned him against it. “Sure, I suppose I should, I guess. Don’t know that I’ll run right out and do it today, though.”

Sam dropped his eyes back to his bowl and after a couple more mouthfuls offered without looking up, “You, know there’s a free designation clinic over on Harper St. They take walk-ins. You could go today.”

Dean pulled his spoon out of his mouth. He eyed Sam curiously. It suddenly struck him that Sam had spent a lot more time recently considering him getting his designation than he had.

“What’s with your sudden rush for me to get tested, Sam?”

Sam’s posture stiffened. He stayed quiet and Dean waited a full minute, watching him push his oatmeal around in his bowl, before finally prompting.

“Sam…”

Intense hazel eyes finally lifted and stared out at him from beneath overlong bangs. Sam drew a deep breath.

“Because when you officially get declared a Dom you can file for emancipation. Be declared a legal adult at sixteen instead of eighteen like everyone else.

“And we wouldn’t have to live like this anymore.”

It took Dean a minute for what Sam was saying to fully sink in. When Sam saw the lightbulb go off, he wasted no time pushing forward. His voice was low but the speed of his words frantic.

“Look Dean, we don’t need him. He’s hardly around anyways, and when he is… You can’t tell me it’s not better here when he’s gone!”

Seeing Dean begin to bristle he tried to put it another way. “We’re practically independent already. I could cut back on some of my after school stuff too. Get a part time job…”

Hearing the desperation in Sam’s voice, atop the table’s scratched formica Dean’s fists clenched. The plastic spoon in his one hand bent, just short of snapping beneath his thumb.

“Stop Sam.”

When Sam kept talking, fast and desperate, nearly begging, Dean put every ounce of potential Dom into his voice.

“I said STOP!”

Sam’s words cut off but his mouth still hung open, lips trembling with the desire to argue.

“You’re not quitting any of your extracurriculars and we’re not leaving Dad! Got it.”

Sam jumped up from his chair. “No, Dean I don’t!” He gestured to the apartment around them, the cracked walls, furniture dragged in from off sidewalks and out of dumpsters. He grabbed up his half-eaten bowl of oatmeal and hurled it into the trash.

“Can you seriously tell me you’re happy living like this? Dude, we don’t even have a proper dish to eat out of!”

“Dad’s work is important Sam. We have to be flexible.”

Used to Sam’s fits, Dean stood now too, ready to get into his space if he needed to restrain him. Sam’s next words froze him, however.

“Flexible? That’s a laugh. How can you be flexible Dean when he beats you to the point you can barely move?”

Dean’s eyes blinked wide, stunned Sam had violated an eternal but unspoken pact between them: never to openly discuss their father’s disciplinary decisions.

Hurt and betrayal combined together inside him into a black funnel cloud of anger. Dean wanted to shout,“ _I take his licks to protect you!”_ but what came out of his mouth instead was cold and clipped.

“We’re done with this conversation, Sam. Go finish getting ready for school.”

His lack of emotion only kicked Sam’s fury up higher. Sweeping one of his big paws over their tiny table, Sam sent his gift, box, book, and bear, skittering to the floor. His cheeks were a hectic pink and messy with sudden tears as he crowded into Dean’s space. It took everything Dean had to hold his ground, but he refused to flinch. Sam’s nostrils flared as he struggled to breathe.

He leaned over and hissed into his ear, “Or maybe you like the way Dad treats you.

“Is that it? Do you like being hurt, Dean? Are you an M to his S? Is that why you’re not anxious to get designated? 'Cause you not the Dom Dad’s trying to convince himself that you are? 'Cause deep down you both know you’re really just his little Sub soldier?

“Yes, sir… No, sir…” Sam sing-songed in his brother’s beet-red ear.

His words were cut short when Dean’s hands shot out sudden and hard. Twin fists punched into his pecs with such force Sam’s reeled backwards, tripped over his own oversized feet, and went down hard on his ass.

Sam’s face was white with shock. Sure, Dean reined him in a lot, and things got physical between them at times, but he’d never struck him like this. Ever.

Dean hated the expression on his little brother’s face, the look in his eyes. It went against everything he’d ever wanted for Sam.

Towering over Sam’s prone body, his head spun and a sickening dizziness gripped him. Afraid he was going to pass out, he moved stiffly back to his chair. He sat down and picked up his twisted spoon; forced himself to take a bite even though he was all but sure it would make him retch.

Fortunately it didn't, because that would have surely undermined the 'masterful' way he said, “clean up the stuff you knocked over Sam, and go get ready for school.”

Even to his own ears his voice sounded icy, lifeless. Dean kept his eyes on his oatmeal, cold now, coagulated islands in a sea of grayed milk. His attention remained fixed there as Sam choked back an angry sob and heaved himself up off the floor.

It wasn’t until a sniffling Sam was gathering up his scattered present, Dean’s gaze flickered over to the door of their father’s room. He breathed a silent sigh of thanks, grateful Sam’s earlier assertion had been correct, that John must be lost in a drunken slumber. Because if their Dad had caught any wind of what had just happened, he and Sam both would have had more than hell to pay.

His eyes flickered back to his bowl as Sam set the restored box on the seat of the chair next to him in silence before leaving the kitchen. Dean made himself finish his breakfast while he listened to Sam stomp around the apartment. He ate slowly, chewing the mush thoroughly, knowing otherwise it would never make it past the hard lump in his throat.

When the front door finally slammed shut, he looked over at the clock on the stove. Less than ten minutes had passed since he’d knocked Sam on his ass, but it felt like he’d been sitting there for hours. He glanced down at the even more battered box holding his presents.

The tears he’d been holding back filled his eyes, hot and stinging.

_Some fucking Daddy Dom I’d make._

Rising from his chair he took his bowl over to the garbage and dumped it. There was still some cereal in it, but as much as he hated to waste food, he just couldn’t make himself eat any more. He leaned back against the counter, The bite of its edge pressing into the bruised flesh high on his ass hurt, but he didn’t move away from it.

He crossed stiff arms over his chest. His eyes drifted, pulled like a magnet back to the box. This time his mind thinking not of the book but the bear a shiver shot up his spine and trembled his lean frame.

_Happy Fuckin’ Birthday._


	2. Seventeen Strikes: Part I

“Hey, Winchester! Wanna ride?”

Looking up from his pushbroom, Dean saw Mr. Herrera leaning against the doorframe of the newly drywalled room. So lost in his thoughts and in his cleaning, he’d been completely oblivious to how quiet the construction site had fallen.

Lifting his ballcap Dean wiped the sweat from his brow. Getting a ride rather than taking the bus would save him over an hour. Not to mention it’d spare him the fare.

He pulled his dust mask away just enough that his words would be clear. “Yes, sir. If it’s not too much trouble.”

Herrera gave a slight snort. “Wouldn’t offer if it was. Finish up here and meet me at my truck.”

Before he left, the contractor took a step into the room to better survey the progress. “Nice seams,” he said casually. Then he turned and walked out.

Two simple words, but they filled Dean’s chest with a pleasurable warmth. The blush in his cheeks wasn’t as welcome however, and he was suddenly grateful for the paper mask still covering his face even if his boss was gone.

After making quick work of his sweeping, Dean did one last check of the room to make sure everything was ready for the next day. Satisfied, he walked out of the empty house.

Stopping on the porch he took advantage of the air compressor to blow off as much of the drywall dust caught in his clothes as possible, and to retrieve the small hand cooler he carried his lunch in.

It was Friday. Now well past five, the street in the becoming development was empty with the exception of the head contractor’s pickup, an older but pristinely kept ‘98 Silverado. Herrera was in the bed arranging his tools. Seeing Dean, he leapt out with an alacrity that belied his forty years.

“The way you work, Winchester…” Herrera shot Dean a grin, “You got something against weekends?”

“No, sir.” Dean smiled back though not quite as fully. Still, he enjoyed the service Dom’s gentle teasing. “Just lost track of time, I guess.”

“None of the guys let you know time was called?”

The way Herrera’s eyes flashed with sudden irritation made Dean uneasy. He replied with a shrug.

“They were busy in other rooms. No big deal, really. I should have been paying more attention.”

There were two blacks on the contractor’s payroll; all the rest were either Central American or Mexican, like Herrera himself. The palest guy on the team and by far the youngest, Dean had spent his first two months at this job taking shit and proving himself.

Now, if not accepted, the rest of crew at least tolerated him, and he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize this progress.

Herrera studied him another long moment. Then he turned back to his truck and pulled a clean but worn beach towel out of the back and tossed it before ambling around to the driver’s side.

Dean caught it with a murmur of “thanks.” He’d never admit it but he was touched by his boss’ thoughtfulness. The first few times Herrera offered him a ride he’d sat in the bed, too well-trained by John to risk getting the truck dirty.

He opened the passenger door and spread the towel over the seat to protect it against any remaining dust in his clothes. Climbing in after, he set his cooler on the floor between booted feet and strapped himself in.

Herrera turned up the volume on the radio and a Tejano beat filled cab as the truck pulled away from the work site. Outside the music their ride was silent but Dean didn’t mind, he was more than tired.

Wending through less traveled streets to avoid the Friday rush, Herrera quickly guided his truck away from the moneyed part of town. Watching the scenery change the farther they traveled, Dean wondered, not for the first time, who would live eventually in the house they were building.

He ignored the familiar pang of knowing it would never be his family.

Pushing this thought away he focused instead on the balmy California air whipping in through the open windows. After a hot day under his mask the air on his face was a blessed relief.

While it had been over three months since he’d last seen their father, Dean was quietly thankful John had moved them out here. Despite his initial protests Sam had fit right in at his new school and now really seemed to be thriving. Not to mention the seventy degree weather of a California February beat the hell out of another midwest winter.

Soon the sprawling mini estates around the worksite gave way to more modest suburbs. Dean knew Huerra lived in one of these: an up and coming area where the older residents were aging out, replaced by a new generation pursuing their American dreams. From here the landscape continued to shift, eventually slipping further down the social ladder to reveal increasing signs of poverty, Dean began to feel his usual restlessness mounting.

Ever observant, his boss picked up on his unease. “Want me to take you all the way home today?”

Since the first time he had accepted a ride, Herrera asked him this every time. Dean was worn out enough today being spared the half-mile walk from their usual drop off point was tempting, but he just shook his head.

“Thanks, but I have a few things I need to pick up on my way home.”

One of the things he liked about his boss was that the Dom never pushed him. Usually he just gave him a nod and left it at that. However, today when they pulled into the parking lot of the run-down corner grocery, before Dean got out, he was stopped by a calloused, sun-dark hand on his arm. He tried not to shy at the unexpected touch and was grateful when he was let go just as quickly.

“The house is almost done; the painters will be in within a couple weeks.” Herrera offered this without looking at him. “I’ll be moving the crew onto another project soon.”

The contractor’s dark eyes stared out the windshield watching the low-income crowd of Friday evening shoppers file in and out of the store like disheveled ants. Dean swallowed the sudden lump in his throat.

“Yessir.”

He’d known this was coming but that didn’t make it any easier. Brought on initially as a day laborer and paid under the table, he’d been lucky Herrera had kept him on as long as he had.

Figuring the start of this conversation signaled his time on the crew was over, mentally he was already gearing himself up. He was imagining how he might approach his other boss at the coffee shop he worked at most weekends about extra hours, when Herrera’s words broke into his thoughts.

“You’re a good kid, Winchester. A little clumsy sometimes but you work hard and you pick up stuff fast.”

Dean forced himself to hold his head high though he really wanted to drop it. His right hand slipped stealthily into his front jean pocket where his thumb anxiously rubbed over the rabbit’s foot on his keychain. As nice as Herrera’s words were so far, he waited now for the man to add the inevitable “but…”

He was surprised when the contractor offered instead, “and even though you’ve only been taping and mudding walls for a few months, you keep up, at the rate you’re going, and pretty soon you’ll be better than Aguilera.”

Dean’s ears caught fire at the unspoken praise in these words: Aguilera was the one who’d shown him the process and had at least half a dozen year’s of drywall experience under his belt. If he was lucky and Herrera really thought this, maybe the contractor would recommend him to someone else. Dean formulated his reply carefully, not wanting to blow it.

“I’m getting better, I guess. But Miguel’s been a good teacher.”

Herrera turned at last to regard him. “Yeah, but he works harder when he’s gotta keep up with you, Banty rooster.”

At the nickname the fire in the tips of Dean’s ears spread to his cheeks.

The guys had started calling him this at first because of his size and his bow-legged walk. Of course they still called him this now too, but the meaning of it had shifted after he’d taken down Lopez, one of the builders on Herrera’s team. Prior to Dean calling him out, Lopez, a power Dom, wouldn’t stop flipping him shit and kept trying to degrade him.

Their fight had been quick and bloody and it was one of those times Dean was grateful for all the training his dad had put him through. After their battle, that was the first time he had expected Herrera to fire him.

Like then, a small hope bloomed in his chest now at the possibility that just maybe he wasn’t being let go.

“So, it might be better if I add you to the payroll a little more permanently just to keep Aguilera on his toes.” Herrera shot him a wink. “What do you think? You want to keep working for me? Officially. No more day labor.”

Dean blinked in astonishment when the question sunk in. His surprise must have shown on his face because Herrera’s face broke into a wry grin. “What can I say? You’re a good worker, for a white boy.”

Dean snorted at the tease but he couldn’t keep from grinning himself. That would mean at least another three months work at better pay than most any other job he could get.

“Yessir. Thank you.”

A minute later, out of the truck, watching it drive away, he was still smiling.

He’d only felt the smallest tweak of conscience when he’d shook his boss’ hand, never knowing when John might move them again. But for now, his last day’s wages sat in his pocket and starting Monday he was on Herrera’s payroll for real.

* * *

High spirits reviving him, Dean went into the market and picked up a gallon of milk to celebrate. God how he craved the stuff these days. He got the real deal too, whole, not the plant based crap Sam favored.

Grabbing a couple boxes of mac and cheese and a bag of frozen green beans to complete his purchases he headed up to the cashier’s stand. He was so lost in his pleasure at continued employment, he failed to note Mr. Montgomery was at the till tonight. As the store manager scanned the goods of the customers ahead of him in line, a pair of college aged kids buying cheap cases of beer, the old man winked at him.

“Evening, Dennis.”

_Shit._

A few months ago he had given Montgomery the false name. It was the same night he’d also given the old Switch permission to suck his cock in the storeroom for forty dollars. Now every time he came in, if Montgomery saw him he got propositioned.

“I got that item you special ordered in today. It’s in the stockroom. If you want, I can have Shane come take over for me so I can take you back there and give it to you.”

Dean had to fight not cringe at the guy’s sleazy double entendres.

The last few times, despite how the extra cash tempted, he had turned the old pervert down, hating the way the man clutched his thighs hard enough to leave bruises when he sucked. Even more than this though, he hated how sick his soul felt for hours afterwards.

Since this was the only store within easy walking distance of their home, he forced himself to give Montgomery one of his winning smiles.

“Thanks, but I don’t need that anymore. You can send it back.”

“Is that because the price went up? Dennis, it really would be easier for you to just take it, than me send it back.” Montgomery eyed him and licked his lips before turning his attention to scanning Dean’s items. “And this time I’m willing to overlook the difference in price for one of my favorite customers.”

Behind him, Dean sensed the people in the line shifting in annoyance at the hold up, but curiosity and his familiarity with scarcity got the better of him.

“How much more is it?”

“Ten.” The eagerness in the manager’s voice was audible. Dean dropped his head.

“Twenty,” he murmured just loud enough for Montgomery to hear him.

“Shane!”

Ignoring the way the old man purposely brushed his fingers, Dean took his change and set about organizing his supplies. He tucked his beans and noodles into his empty cooler while the pimpled clerk, Shane, shifted from stacking soup cans to the till.

A few minutes later, gallon of milk in one hand, his lunch pail in the other, he followed the manager into the back of the store.

* * *

Halfway home, as he marched along the shoulder of the road, even if he hadn’t had his aching thighs and chafed cock to remind him of what he’d done, Dean would have still been feeling the weight of the three new twenties in his wallet and the five pounds of bagged hamburger dangling from his wrist too acutely to have been able to forget the humiliation of what he’d just endured.

His cheeks burned. His eyes too.

He took an angry swipe at their sudden watering, blaming it on the blooming grasses in the fields alongside him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t shift the fault for the uncomfortable rocks in his gut so easily. Or the fact he’d had trouble getting hard.

_Again._

His recent transaction with Montgomery was yet another worrying reminder that, for the last couple months, he’d suddenly become very unlike the walking hard on an almost seventeen-year-old guy was supposed to be.

Even his morning wood had all but disappeared lately. And while waking up with a boner had been annoying at times, the consternation of this paled in comparison to finding his own sheets flat while his much younger brother was pitching a sizeable tent most every night in the cot next to him.

And it wasn’t just getting hard. When he did manage it, he’d had trouble coming too. Like this evening, much to Mr. Montgomery’s delight, who seemed to think his dick was better tasting than an all day sucker. The bastard had licked and slurped at it like it was one too.

Despite the warm winter sun, Dean shuddered.

If not for the fact he’d been struggling recently even with his own hand (something he’d never had issue with since discovering the full joys of self pleasure at twelve), he might have simply chalked these issues up to the truth: that having a fat, bald, fifty-year-old man’s chapped lips sandpapering his cock was hardly arousing

Dean stopped. Suddenly he could feel the breath from Montgomery’s oversized nostrils stirring the sparse thatch of his pubic hair; the man’s fat lower lip at the base of him brushing his balls; thick tongue slipping out to lick at his sac while his cock was engulfed.

Dashing through the roadside weeds, he dropped his groceries and caught a hold of the nearest fencepost. The rough wood under his fingertips helped to ground him. But he still vomited up the quarter gallon of milk he’d drunk as soon as he left the store to cleanse his palette: even if he hadn’t sucked on anything but his own cries, his mouth had been left bitter.

When he finished retching Dean pulled his rabbit’s foot out of his pocket. Crouching down, his backside pressed against the fence post for support, fingers rubbing the soft black and white fur clutched in his sweaty palm, he closed his eyes. He stayed that way until he caught his breath and thought he could stand up without passing out.

By the time he finally reached the trailer park where he and Sam had been living for the past eight months, the sun hung low in the sky.

Dean had managed to shove his most recent encounter with Mr. Montgomery into the box he kept in the corner of his mind marked 'to be forgotten/never mentioned.' And despite how packed this box was, and the fact it was getting increasingly harder to fit anything new into it, Dean thought he’d managed to get a pretty good grip on himself again.

That was, until he saw his dad’s black Impala, _Baby_ , parked in the weedy gravel drive outside their trailer.

* * *

Taking out his keychain once more, Dean unlocked the trailer door and quietly stepped in. A breath of relief escaped him when John was nowhere to be seen, the door to their father's bedroom closed.

At the same he was hit with the unwieldy weight of just how much he’d missed John too. Quickly he had to quash the urge to run into his dad’s room to see him.

_Yeah, cause that would be a disaster._

He had a similar urge, though much less potent, seeing Sammy seated at their newest rickety kitchen table.

Sam’s head was bowed, long dark-blond hair covering his face as he poured over a stack of manila folders, John’s files of bond jumpers and bounties. The laptop he had gotten on loan from school was open. Long fingers reached over to tap on it occasionally.

Sam grunted in acknowledgement but didn’t look up at Dean’s arrival. It wasn’t a greeting their father would have found acceptable, but at thirteen he was clearly in teenager territory and right now Dean didn’t have the energy to scold. Instead, he doffed his sweat-stained cap, bent down and pulled off his boots. Stripping out of his shirt he stuck it in the laundry sack he kept near the door.

John liked their quarters tidy and so, out of habit now more than anything, Dean did what he could to keep the dirt in their house to a minimum. Since he usually did wash on the weekend, he shucked out of his jeans too and stuck these in the bag as well.

As he did, he took a quick sniff of his pits. His brow automatically crinkled. This was another change he’d noticed. Sure, after a day of hard labor he still smelled like sweat, but it didn’t hold the same teen boy funk it had previously. For a moment his mind flashed with the spectre of illness, but he seized this and slammed it into his mind’s 'do not open under penalty of law' box.

Picking up his cooler and the grocery bag of meat and milk, Dean went into the kitchen and put his things away.

That he was dressed now only in his tidy whities didn’t bother him at all. Living in the pocket of his father and Sam had eliminated his modesty a long time ago. Not to mention, he was actually more than a little proud of the new muscle working construction these past months had put on his small, lean frame.

Sam however, being the pill he was, held one of his big paws up in front of his still bowed face as if to shield himself from the ‘all but bare’ sight him.

“Yeah, I understand,” Dean murmured as he headed towards the back of the trailer. “The glory that is me can be a little overwhelming. Start dinner, will you? The meat I brought, Sammy, not just rabbit food.”

He ignored the snarky “you wish” and the practiced way Sam’s hand shifted so that only the middle finger was visible and went to grab some clothes from their room before hitting the shower.

* * *

Dean had been raised that showers in the Winchester household were a thing of utility, nothing else, so, unlike beauty boy Sam, he was in and out in three minutes. Though two of these were spent trying to scrub Montgomery’s mouth off his junk, he still shaved sixty seconds off his usual time since John was home. If his dad was sleeping he didn’t want the trailer’s knocking pipes to wake him.

Choosing to go commando because his balls needed air after sweating all day in his jeans, not to mention his dick still felt abraded, Dean pulled on his favorite baggy sweats. Slipping into an old lat tank, he hummed at the soothing sensation of cotton against his skin, soft as silk after so many washings.

Despite the comfort of his new attire, his gut was still twisting for reasons he didn’t care to think about. Instead, he left the spicy, Irish Spring steam of the bathroom and stepped out into the narrow hallway to the scent of grilling meat.

Here, the exhaustion of his day hit him fully.

His chest swelled with gratitude seeing that while he was in the shower, Sam had risen from his spot at the table to start dinner with the provisions he’d brought. He padded on bare feet into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of milk while Sam cooked.

“How long’s Dad been home?” he asked around swallows.

“Long enough,”Sam muttered.

Dean choked and almost lost his grip on his glass when Sam turned and he saw his little brother’s face for the first time since getting home. He had no internal assigned mental number to categorize Sammy's current expression but that wasn't what had made him choke.

“Shit, Sam...”

Setting his milk down, Dean grabbed the bag of frozen green beans from the counter. When he went to press it against the purpling bruise on Sam’s cheek, his brother slapped his hand away. Glaring he elbowed him away from the stove and forced the makeshift icepack on him.

Sam took the green beans reluctantly and pressed them to his cheek with a wince. Then he leaned back against the counter watching Dean take over the cooking.

“You going to tell me again I need to watch myself? Behave better Sam?!”

Fighting not to cringe at the condemning hiss in his little brother’s voice, Dean held himself stiff. He kept his focus on the mac noodles boiling in their dented pot and the grilling patties.

Sam pulled the bag away from his cheek. “He wasn’t even home twenty minutes this time, Dee.”

Dean flipped the burgers over. “Sam…”

“You know why he did it? The unmowed dirt patch out front and the weeds in the drive. Fuck, Dean…” Sam ripped open the bag and dumped the beans into their one other saucepan. “What hurts worse than his punch is that you didn’t even warn me.”

“What?” Dean turned to Sam and the betrayed look on his brother’s face crushed him. “What makes you think I knew he was coming?”

Sam gestured to the stove. “When was the last time you bought meat that wasn’t marked half off? Or beef at all, for that matter?”

“Manager’s special,” Dean said weakly not wanting to go into the details and still reeling from the fact Sam seemed to think he’d somehow set him up.

“I swear to god, Sam. I didn’t know.”

Sam’s fox eyes narrowed, studying him intently. Then he sighed and some of the tension slipped from his ever broadening shoulders. He moved in and hip bumped Dean aside to pull the noodles from the burner before they boiled over.

“Whatever. Go sit down and I’ll finish. You must be tired.”

Dean was tired, even more than before, despite the jolt of adrenaline he'd gotten seeing Sam's bruised face. But his exhaustion was nowhere near the fatigue he'd just heard in Sammy’s tone.

Troubled, he picked up his glass and headed over to the ancient couch that had lived in the trailer far longer than its newest occupants.

Not long after they’d moved in here, John had bought an old tv and dvd for them. Since there was no cable, Dean picked up the remote and started the Star Wars disc that almost perpetually lived in the player. With his dad home, he cut the volume and turned the close captioning on. Not that he couldn't have recited the dialogue by heart.

The movie’s images rolled past without him really seeing them as he sipped him milk, his mind too busy thinking about...

_Sam who’d managed to skip a grade at his newest school and was taking all AP classes to boot._

_Sam who was too young to sound so weary._

It wasn’t until a paper plate was set in front of him with his dinner that Dean roused from his churning thoughts. He looked up at his little brother. “Little” no longer fitting entirely now that Sam had at least a couple inches on him in height.

“You gonna eat?”

Above him Sam shrugged. “Not really hungry.”

“Well, if you’re not going to make a plate then sit your ass down, Sasquatch. You make nervous looming over me like that.”

This at least pulled a tight smile from Sam (near-bitchface # 110), who obliged, plunking his bony butt down on the couch beside him. This close however, Dean felt the unhappiness radiating off him, so potent it had an almost audible buzz.

Pointedly avoiding his wheatbread-wrapped burger for now, Dean asked around a bite of macaroni, “How’s Aaron?”

Aaron, a funny, brilliant kid, was Sam’s closet friend from school and on the math team with him.

“Good, I guess.”

Sam drew a circle in the carpet’s matted nap with the toe poking outing of his sock. Dean swallowed hard on what he knew would likely be the last bite of his dinner before his stomach knotted too tight to digest anything else.

“Why don’t you call him. See if you can stay the night. Maybe Mr. Bass can come pick you up.”

Aaron’s folks were a well matched Jewish D/s couple, both service oriented. And once Aaron’s dad, a calm stay at home sub, had caught onto Sam’s situation, he’d pretty much offered him an open invitation to their home.

At Dean’s suggestion Sam’s toe stopped its spiral and his dark-blond head shot up. His eyes were wide and wondering. It was an understandable reaction: whenever their dad showed up they were pretty much on lockdown for the first forty-eight hours at least, until their presence got too annoying and John either kicked them out or took off to the bars.

“Really?”

The light in Sam’s hazel eyes showed he knew just exactly what Dean was offering him here. And the likely cost of it.

“You get the research Dad wanted done on the files he gave you?”

“Not quite,” Sam shook his head. “So I should probably stay and finish.”

Sam was clearly willing to man up, but Dean could see his brother was all but trembling with the desire to escape.

“Could you do the rest of it at Aaron’s and e-mail it to him?”

“Dean…”

 _Fuck._ Sammy looked like he might actually start crying. Dean puffed himself up despite the fact he felt like bawling himself for an entirely different reason. He cut Sam off and hoped his voice didn’t break.

“Well then. I got this. Go on.”

When Sam didn’t immediately move, Dean kicked his brother’s socked foot with his bare one.

“You heard me. Get your mopey ass out of here!”

Thankfully, there were no tears, though Sam’s eyes remained precariously glassy and he sniffled before scrambling up from the couch. Once his trac phone call to Aaron was made and gladly confirmed, he moved like his tail was on fire.

No doubt fearful that John might suddenly emerge from the bedroom and catch him in the act of leaving, in less than five minutes he had his laptop tucked into his backpack, along with the research directions on John’s remaining files, and the few things he’d need for an overnight stay.

“Aaron and his dad are going to pick me up at the market, so I’m going to head out.”

Sam’s posture was as tight as his voice and Dean knew he’d drop everything and stay if he gave him any reason. So, he put on a smart ass smile and shrugged.

“Alright. You better get then. No reason for you to be standing around. It’s not like I’m gonna kiss you goodbye or anything.”

“Jerk,” Sam said fondly as he turned to go. He was halfway out the door when he suddenly turned around and came back to the foot of the couch.

Dean tensed but tried to sound casual. “Forget something?”

“Almost.”

Sam shot a quick glance down the hall, clearly feeling just as nervous now about his lingering as Dean did. He pulled an envelope out of a pocket of his pack and dropped an envelope on the cushion.

“What’s this?”

Sam shook his head. “Dude… _Again_? It’s your birthday tomorrow.”

“Oh, yeah... Thanks Sammy.”

Dean picked up the envelope but he didn’t open it. And Sam didn’t revolt at the nickname like he had been lately, instead he just shook his head again. The suspicious glassiness returned to his eyes.

“Back at you, bro.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Dean nodded towards the door. “Go on. Get out of here!”

Once Sammy was safely out of the house Dean wrapped up his plate and stuck it in the fridge. He’d already known the burger would sit heavy in his stomach, but now his appetite was gone completely.

Trying not to think too hard about all the beer suddenly stockpiled on the refrigerator's normally spare shelves he packed up the rest of the food on the stove after making a plate for John. Then he returned to his spot on the couch to wait.

Alone, he curled into a corner of it, eyes numbly watching the silent action on the Tv’s flickering screen.

One of his hands caught a bit of the soft fabric of his sweats. Unconsciously his fingertips began to worry the the material between them. Meanwhile, his other hand rose to his mouth in a new habit, lightly chewing the nail or knuckle of his thumb.

By the time Dean’s ears caught the rattle of the knob to his father’s bedroom the movie was almost over and the base of his thumbnail was crusted dark with blood.

* * *

Morning found Dean at the table, cursing over his father’s guns.

He would have liked to blame the fact it was taking him twice as long to clean them on account of the stiffness living in his limbs from the previous night’s whupping, but he knew it wasn’t just that.

As if to illustrate, the oiled recoil spring of the 9 mm he was working on slipped from his clumsy fingers as he tried slide it back into place.

Dean cursed again. While his bandaged thumb wasn’t helping him any, he’d faced this same loss of fine motor skill a few times recently hanging drywall: his fingers suddenly seemingly unable to hold the screws as he went to drill them through the plaster into the studs.

That was one of the reasons he like mudding so much. The swipe of the trowel, the repetitive broad motion of the plaster was easy, meditative almost.

Flexing his fingers, he drew a few deep breaths and focused. It didn’t always work, but fortunately this time it did. The spring slipped into place, the rest of the 9mm’s parts followed so that, thankfully, when John lumbered into the kitchen all his weapons had been attended to.

Dean froze at his dad’s entrance, waiting silently to see what kind of day this was going to be. Given how badly John had reacted to him giving Sam permission to leave his first night back with them, Dean wasn’t really holding out any hopes it was going to be a ‘good day.’

John grunted at the full mug of water and the Tylenol laid out for him next to the coffee pot. He dumped the water in the sink immediately and filled it with the strong brew left warming for him. He was three or four swallows in before he turned around.

Seeming to register his son for the first time, he refilled his mug and moved over to the table. Rather than sit down right away, instead he hovered over Dean, leaning down to pick up his firearms one at a time and inspect them.

Dean had learned years ago not to expect praise from his father, but when John gave his second grunt of the morning in apparent approval of the job he’d done, it was all he could do to keep his bruised body from going slack with relief.

Finally John settled into his chair. He sipped his coffee in silence for a few moments before picking up one of his file folders and skimming Sam’s added notes. Dean was just about to ask if he was hungry when John’s eye flickered from his files and fell on Sam’s birthday card.

The envelope was half tucked under the gun oil stained towel bearing his newly cleaned arsenal.

“What’s that?”

He pulled the purple envelope out and eyed it as though it had some how personally affronted him.

Dean’s heart pounded in his chest. He’d plucked up the card that morning on his way to the table from where it had lodged, between the cushions of the couch. Now he was silently cursing himself for not taking the caution of stashing it in his room.

“Birthday card, Sir. From Sam.”

Internally Dean kicked himself, it wasn’t like the clarification was needed. Who else would even know it was his birthday? Although, from the look on his dad’s face, hearing this, he clearly had forgotten.

Dean dropped his eyes. Under the table his fingers picked at the already frayed edges of the band aid on his thumb. One would think that by now his father’s lapses in memory wouldn’t hurt so bad.

John opened the envelope and slid out a card that sported a scantily clad woman draped over the hood of a muscle car. Inside was the publisher’s corny caption: “Happy Birthday, Hotrod!”

Below this was Sam’s careful writing.

_Make sure you get this date off. And stop being a punk and ask Lisa to go with you, because I won’t. - Sam._

Taped inside the card were two tickets for a midnight showing of the newest Star Wars movie.

“Who’s Lisa?”

Dean ducked his head, his cheeks burning. “I work with her at the coffee shop.”

“She a sub?”

“Yessir.”

Dean looked up when his father cleared his throat. But rather than say anything about his Birthday or Sam’s demanded date, instead he only asked gruffly, “When’s Samuel coming home?”

Thoughtfully, though also likely out of guilt, Sam had texted him that morning to make sure he was “okay” and they’d agreed he’d come back today in time for Saturday dinner.

“He’ll be back around five, Sir.”

John returned to sipping his coffee. Dean had started to rise to go make them breakfast but his dad’s voice stopped him.

“You did good taking your punishment last night, Dean… And Sam’s.”

Dean settled carefully back down. He swallowed hard but forced himself to maintain eye contact with the dark gaze staring at him over the rim of John’s mug.

“Thank you, Sir.”

John waved his reply away with a wave of his hairy hand.

“But domming isn’t just about dealing out punishment when your sub disobeys, son. Or disappoints.” Dean couldn’t hold back his wince at the last two words. “It’s also about dealing out sweetness too, when it’s earned.”

The knot already formed in Dean’s gut suddenly doubled in size.

“Your mama knew how take her licks, but she was so good I hardly ever had to deal them.” John rubbed a hand over his mouth to scrub at his sigh. “And honestly, there was nothing I liked more than to be sweet to that woman.”

This same hand slipped under the table and clasped his son’s knee.

“I should show you how to be _sweet_ to your sub too. After all, what kind of father would I be if I left your education one sided. Especially if you’re going to be spending time time with a young lady Sub.”

Dean didn’t say anything. After all, it wasn’t like this would be his first lesson in his father’s methods of ‘sweetness.’ His thumb slipped up to his lips and his teeth nipped at the band aid’s edges.

John gulped back the last of his coffee, pushed away from the table and stood. A few moments later, Dean stood up on shaky legs as well, and followed his father back into his bedroom

* * *

Late morning sun threw itself against the cheap blinds in John’s bedroom. While he snored loudly, the sleep of the spent, Dean lay awake beside him, his eyes dully tracking the minutes on the digital alarm clock on his father’s night stand.

He was stiff. His back hurt from the last night’s belting and from lying still for so long, afraid that if he moved he’d wake John. His ass hurt too, but he’d already filed that pain into the box 'saved for future nightmares.' So, he wasn’t going to think about that particular ache any more at the moment.

To distract, Dean consoled himself father’s lessons in ‘sweetness’ had only happened about half a dozen times in his life, and hadn’t started until he was well established in his fifteenth year.

_So it wasn’t like I was actually a child when…_

He shifted gears, throwing that unfinished sentence into yet another one of the crates that filled the warehouse of his mind.

_It’s starting to look like the final resting place of the ark of the covenant in here._

He snorted softly in disgust with himself. His mind was being unwieldy today and it took more effort than usual to force himself back to his list of positives about this situation. He supposed, at least n the grand scheme of things, these exercises in ‘pleasure’ took far less time and usually hurt way less than most punishments.

Dean carefully cracked his aching jaw and stretched it.

Not a positive, was that these lesson also normally seemed to usually entail him actually being ‘sweet’ to his dad first, for about fifteen minutes, before John dealt him the full strength of his three to five minutes of full dom ‘pleasure giving.’

Still, at least he wasn’t having to spend the whole of these eighteen to twenty-two minutes entirely under his dad’s special tutelage.

Of course, the biggest plus was that, _so far_ , John didn’t seem to have any interest in educating his ‘Sub’ son Sam in these same niceties. Dean supposed their dad was maybe refraining out of consideration for Sam’s future Dom.

A lot of Dom’s reveled in taking their true Sub’s firsts…

John’s snoring stopped. Dean tensed but then his father merely rolled over in his sleep. In the process, he threw a muscular arm over and pulled him tight against him.

 _And then there’s this…_ A tiny voice inside him whispered.

This was the biggest gold star, the secret reason he had never really tried to put a stop to these lessons.

Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing as the warmth of his father’s body ignited his own. The smooth skin of his back prickled with feel of the solid, hairy torso pressed against him.

Dean pulled the bit of sheet one of his hands had been petting slowly up to his face to catch the sudden tears dammed behind his closed lids.

_What the fuck's wrong with me?_

He’d box that one up later. Right now though, he was too consumed with his need for this peaceful touch. Dean lay there suddenly so drunk in the succor of it that, for a moment, everything, even his physical discomfort fell away.

Inside him something wailed when, too soon, John woke and suddenly went stiff behind him. It hurt far more than the belt when the man pulled his arm away so fast one would think touching his son kindly physically burned him.

A moment later his father’s hand returned, but only to be set carefully on Dean’s welted back to push him towards the edge of the bed.

“Go make breakfast, Dean. Just cause it’s Saturday don’t mean there’s not things to attend to.”

* * *

After breakfast John didn’t linger. He put his dishes in the sink and then disappeared into his room again, emerging with three more guns for Dean to clean.

Dean was hit with a sense of deja vu staring down at the firearms laying atop the cleaning towel. John picked up a couple of his serviced guns and slid them into their various holsters.

“I’m going to go see Balthazar about these,” he gestured to the files. “Plus, he owes me for three recoveries.

“I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

“Yessir.”

Reaching for his folders John stopped. “You eligible to be tested this year?”

It was all Dean could do to school the shock from his face: apparently his dad not only didn’t remember it was his birthday, but  didn’t even recall just how old he was.

Dean’s cheeks burned and his eyes stung. Not trusting his voice he just nodded. John nodded back and picked up his files.

“I don’t care what else you’ve got planned; go get your designation today.”

Dean nodded again

John disappeared after this back into his bedroom. He emerged a minute later files in one hand, a light jacket in the other. On top of the folders was a wrinkled brown paper bag. He set this down beside Dean on the table before making his exit.

“Happy Birthday, Son.

“Whatever you test out to be, I’ve no doubt you’ll soon find this comes in handy.”

He didn’t wait for Dean to open it before walking out. It was a good thing too.

Peering into the bag a few minutes after his dad had shut the door behind him, Dean blanched and then burst into tears. He threw the bag across the room where it hit the wall with a thud before falling. When it struck the ground, the coiled leather snaked out.

It was his father’s favorite strap, the one whose marks still wept under his tee-shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have decided to cut off my ever-lengthening chapters around fifteen pages. Because of this I had to turn this chapter into a two-parter.
> 
> And if you think Dean's life sucks right now... I'm just warming up.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Seventeen Strikes - Part II

Dean gazed out the window of the bus. His thoughts elsewhere, the cityscape rolled past his eyes unseen. While his mind worked through the events of the last twenty-four hours, the fingers of his right hand worried the soft fur of his rabbit’s foot.

Deep in his heart he knew so much of how his father treated him and Sam was wrong. Not only that, but as the years went by John’s behavior was getting worse. As if to underscore this a bump in the road made the back of the bus bounce. Ass still tender, Dean winced at the impact.

Try as he might to control his thoughts his mind flashed back to an hour earlier: the image of his reflection in the mirror when he’d stripped to shower before leaving the trailer. He’d been able to ignore the hollow look in his eyes, but the fresh stripes laid bright across his shoulders and the older scars that had greeted him as he prepared to wash his father’s “sweetness” out of his sore butthole weren’t so easily dismissed.

_I need another box…_

Trying to locate a container in his hectic brain for this memory wasn’t easy: every box, when he opened it, hoping to put the afternoon away, held Sam’s upset face. He couldn’t escape the image. Sam’s hazel eyes glared back at him, his bruised cheek ticking in anger.

_How much longer until the guy in the mirror is me, Dee?”_

The question broke Dean from his reverie and jolted him back to the present. It left him blinking back sudden, unwanted tears. His blond head dropped. He knew he could keep enduring, but Sam… Sam was different. Too smart and sensitive for such treatment, their father was going to ruin him if he didn’t do something soon.

Rubbing his watery eyes Dean saw his blurry stop up ahead. His stomach ached at the thought of getting designated.

 _Stop being such a pussy_. _What are you afraid of?_

Stuffing his rabbit’s foot into the pouch of the oversized hoodie he’d dressed in, he reached up and pulled the cord for the bus to stop. Body stiff from the length of time he’d been sitting, he rose a little more slowly than normally.

Across the aisle a skinny old dom leered at him. Dean scowled at the smug look on the guy’s face, as though he knew exactly why he was carrying himself so carefully.

_Fucking pervert._

Though it pained him, he put some jaunt into his step and sped up his exit.

Out on the street, once the bus trundled off he slowed down again. Breathing a soft sigh he kept walking, grateful not to feel anything dripping into his clean underwear.

John never wore a condom. And no matter how much he tried to rinse himself out, it seemed like he leaked for days after one of their ‘special sessions’. This thought on top of all the others he’d been wrestling with made something suddenly ‘click’ inside Dean.

_As soon as I get designated a dom things are going to be different._

It wasn’t the first time he’d made such internal declarations, but things were already different now than they’d been last year. The way they’d been managing, even though it made his chest ache, Dean knew he and Sam could get along without John. In fact, Sam was right, things were actually easier when their dad was gone these days.

Yeah, he’d get his designation, then he’d do what Sam had suggested last year and get emancipated.

Maybe he’d even see if they could get Sam designated early too. With only sixty percent accuracy before coming of age, early testing wasn’t looked on very positively. But if Sam tested submissive, Dean knew he might be able to claim him as his sub. Emancipated and with Sammy under his guardianship, John wouldn’t have any legal rights to them then.

A terrible mix of fear and hope made his stomach flip as his thoughts raced onwards.

 _I could find a cheap apartment._ _Get a little clunker truck for work and to drive Sammy around_. _Money would be tight but…._

With the scant amount their father gave in provision for when he was gone, it wasn’t like their finances would really be all that different. Recalling the job he’d accepted from Mr. Herrera buoyed Dean’s resolve. He would accept it and once he had a few more skills, he could take on other jobs under the table. And if Sam got an after school job too, he was sure they could make it.

The non-descript beige building that housed the designation center loomed before him.

“I can do this… I can really do this…”

As he whispered these words he wasn’t talking himself up for his impending classification this time, Dean was thinking about the very real possibility of freedom. A new life for him and Sam.

Determined, he squared his aching shoulders and entered the center.

_____________________

The waiting room was surprisingly cosy, its walls painted in bright, soothing colors.The furniture was mixed in styles but it all looked comfortable. Framed photos on the wall depicted all the various designations in only the most positive lights.

There were a couple other people in the waiting area. A large woman sitting with what was most likely her daughter. A young man accompanied by a woman who was probably to be his first dom.

Dean made sure his manner was cavalier as he checked in. He paused with his clipboarded questionnaire, turning back from the receptionist’s desk, considering where to sit.

Unlike many poor schlepps, he knew that the designation process actually started the moment one entered the door. John had explained it to him once: how every move was recorded by camera, nonverbal cues read as part of the process for determining inclinations.

The way his dad had talked about things, Dean determined the girl was likely a sub, her mother a sub too. They’d chosen to sit in a pale pastel section of the room under some photos of general doms and happy submissives. Seated alongside each other in separate chairs, close but not touching, their arrangement spoke of shared status and comfort through proximity, but not the kind a dom and sub would display.

An example of this other was across the room from them in the teen boy and his companion. Together on a loveseat couch, he was pressed as close to her as possible, his head resting lightly on her shoulder. The woman held one of his hands, her thumb rubbing soothing circles on its back in a way that was intimate but not sexual.

The astroturf green fabric of the loveseat and the framed photos above of frolicking pets made it easy for Dean to anticipate what this boy’s designation would be. His cheeks flushed in empathy imagining the humiliation of the kid, having to spend the rest of his life collared and on his knees.

_Poor bastard._

The lonely twist in his heart he’d felt first seeing these pairings relaxed with his assessments. Dean silently assured himself he was like neither of these teens. He was glad now too that he’d come on his own. After all, a dom wouldn’t need hand-holding. Eyes sweeping the room again, he made his decision and soon flopped down in a sturdy, black leather single positioned with a series of strong dom portraits behind it.

_Leather dom, military, daddy…_

Dean left off reading the images and settled. The smell of leather reminded him of John’s belt but the chair was comfortable, the easiest thing on his bruised ass he’d so far encountered today, so he stayed. Another couple entered the clinic. A rather stately looking dom with his daughter. Dean watched as the man let the young woman lead him over into a baby-blue corner.

The girl kept up a pretty constant chatter, her voice high but not shrill. The man remained largely quiet, but when he did speak his voice was low and warm. Dean thought the guy smiled too much.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the dom’s grin widened when his daughter popped up off the brightly patterned loveseat she’d chosen and moved over to a Littles’ play-station. The father dom’s expression was nothing but fond, watching his teenage child begin to bang plastic pots about on plus-sized Fisher-Price oven.

 _What guy is happy his kid is a ‘little’? Fucking phony._ Dean was sure the dude’s grin came from knowing he soon wouldn’t be burdened anymore. _Bet he can’t wait to dump her ass with some new ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy.’_ Probably take her straight from the clinic and drop her at one of those little ‘adjustment’ centers.

Watching the phony-smiling dom and the seemingly clueless ‘little’ girl made Dean sick. He quickly set his attention back to his clipboard.

______________________

How much time had passed, Dean couldn’t tell. There was no clock in the waiting room. New people had trickled in slowly and all those who’d been there when he’d first come in were gone. Father dom and ‘little’ girl included. Apparently the dad had prescheduled, so they’d slipped right in.

Dean’s head ached and his eyelids were heavy. The chair was comfortable, he was warm, and he still wasn’t done with filling out his fucking papers. He tried to refocus tired eyes on the questions but the words kept rearranging themselves in ways that didn’t make sense.

“Probably need glasses _…”_ he mumbled to himself. Sammy would shit himself laughing at that. Dean sighed. He’d never been particularly good at school stuff, reading especially. And with the letter shifting thing going on, the last year or so getting worse, he was glad he’d dropped out.

Frustrated, he pushed the papers aside. _I need a break from this shit._ The designation forms went on for pages, probing every aspect of his life.  For the questions he could decipher Dean thought he’d  been pretty smart at least about picking the right answers to get him the dom status he needed.

_Of course there’s still the blood test..._

He pushed this annoying fact away while his gaze drifted around, scouting the waiting room’s new occupants. He stopped on a trio this time, now occupying the ‘Little’ corner. Between mama dom and sub daddy, sat a boy who looked close to his age. Not one of the three of them looked particularly happy.

 _That’s more like it_.

The teen sat stiff but couldn’t seem to stifle the occasional wiggle. His expression was morose for the most part, but his eyes kept wandering longingly over to the toys.

Dean’s eyes followed and he recognized a number of items similar to those Lisa’s five-year-old boy Ben had. A small smile curled his mouth thinking about his submissive co-worker. He liked her a lot. Respected her too. A single mom and a sub who had the courage to get herself and her boy away from an abusive dom.

Her son Ben was sweet and spunky as well. Dean recalled the few times he’d helped entertain Ben when the kid had been dropped past the coffee shop early by his sitter. More than once, when they weren’t too busy, he’d goofed around with Ben in the shop’s toy corner until Lisa was done.

Warmth filled his chest recalling how the last time she’d teased him about her “two boys,” since he’d so engaged Ben in their play.

_That’s how it should be. Toy corners for real kids… Not freaks._

Dean winced realizing it was his Dad’s voice ringing in his head and not his own. His eyes flickered back to the kid staring at the clinic’s toys.

“Dane Wesson!”

It took the name being called three times for Dean to remember that was him. Before he’d left the trailer John had called in a reminder, adamant he use one of his false ID’s. Though he should have been used to it by now, Dean had never quite understood his dad’s paranoia. But over the years he and Sam had hardly ever been let out into the world under their real names.

“Here.”

Shifting his unfinished questionnaire in suddenly sweaty hands Dean looked down and frowned. He’d unconsciously tucked one of his feet up under him in the chair at some point. He hoped this lapse had only been momentary though the pins and needles in his leg as he swung his foot to the ground told him otherwise. He cursed softly under his breath.

Despite the plushness of his seat, stiff muscles hollered at him now that he’d moved. Dean stretched and stepped forward, making sure to open his movements to occupy more space. Head held high, never-minding his aches, he swaggered after the clinic nurse back into the testing area.

________________________

“So this is where the processing starts.”

Dean didn’t counter the pretty blond switch whose name tag read “Tiffany” as she took him back into a holding area. Here, she had him set aside his clipboard so she could get his stats. Height and weight recorded she led him over to a counter.  
  
Dean was a little surprised to see his weight was down ten pounds, he attributed it to all the physical construction work he’d been doing was, although he thought he should have been heavier from all the muscle he’d been building. He was about to tell Tiffany she’d gotten his height wrong too, stealing an inch from him, but the nurse spoke before he did.

“Hand, please.”

Dean offered his right hand automatically only to pull it away again as soon as he realized her intention.

“What the hell’s this?”

Tiffany’s blue eyes blinked wide at his reaction. “It’s standard protocol for all designations these days. All fingerprints go into a national registry.” Seeing this didn’t make Dean any less uncomfortable, she added. “Mostly it helps us keep track of people. Some dynamics are more vulnerable than others. It helps us keep them safe.”

Dean wondered if his father knew about this. He doubted he did, otherwise John would have likely taken him for a blackmarket screening somewhere instead of sending him there. Looking up he saw the nurse was waiting for him, an expression of question on her face.

Right… Making a fuss about this would be a lot more suspicious than not.

Despite the fist of unease gripping his guts, Dean allowed the fingers on his right hand to be rolled and pressed onto a transparency covered scanner. Then his left. Afterward the aide handed him a small piece of white paper to press off the excess ink before finally handing him a tissue to wipe off the last of it.

“Now if you’ll just pull down the front of your shirt… I’m going to put this monitor on you, it will track your heart rate, blood pressure, ect., while your designation consultant goes over your questionnaire with you.”

This was getting too complicated. Dean’s anxiety mounted by the second. Unable to remember he had any visible marks there or not, fighting not to bolt, he pulled his hoodie open and the thin tee-shirt under it down. He breathed an audible sigh when he saw nothing but smooth, pale skin.

Two white adhesive discs were pressed to the top of his pecs just under his collarbones. Thin wires clipped to a snap on the back of each one and ran to a tiny monitor the nurse clipped to the front of his sweatshirt.

“Some people find the designation process very stressful and we want to mitigate this as much as possible.”

Dean frowned, sincerely unhappy with this turn of events. He wondered how many people bought this crap. It clear to him this was basically a lie detector.

_Who cares, you know what you are…_

Unfortunately he didn’t feel quite as confident as the voice in his head sounded. As the nurse led him down the hall to a private room he determined as soon as she left him, he’d find a way to quietly slip out of the facility. It meant facing John’s wrath, but if he explained the prints and the bio-tracking his father might go easy on him.

Luck was just not with him today, however. As the nurse opened the door to usher him into his room, a middle-aged black woman joined them.

“Hello, Mr. Wesson,” she greeted with a warm smile on her face. “I’m Miss Moseley” She gave a nod to the name tag on her chest which also offered her designation as a dom.

“And I’m going to be your consultant today. You can call me Missouri though. I’m not formal.”

She followed Dean and the nurse into the room, after motioning for Dean to pass his questionnaire over, she stood and and watched as his blood was drawn.

“I’ll be back with the results as soon as the lab’s done, Missouri.”

The consultant nodded to Tiffany and indicated for Dean to take a seat as soon as the nurse left them.

“Seventeen, huh, Mr. Wesson?”

Dean felt the urge to offer his false first name to her in reciprocation for her own, but then figured that wasn’t something a dom would do. So, instead he just shifted slightly in his seat and answered.

“Yes.”

Deciding it would be safer to keep his responses short and sweet he didn’t say anything else.

“Most come in right at sixteen.”

“My family travels.”

“Really? You get to see a lot of the world then?”

“I suppose.”  

He watched Missouri sit down next to the room’s computer and open a screen. The machine on his chest was synced with the desktop and his displayed heart rate jumped when he saw this.

Missouri didn’t comment, however.

“You came on your own?”

“My dad’s working. And I didn’t see any reason he needed to be here.” Dean spoke with an assurance that came more from the fact he didn’t really want John there.

“Well, a lot of folks are more comfortable having someone here with them on such a big day.” Missouri gave him a look that was far too intense for Dean’s tastes before she dropped her eyes away to glance at his forms. “And a lot of parents wouldn’t want to miss such an important moment…”

She paused as if expecting Dean to respond to this somehow but he chose to remain quiet.

“I see you have your mother listed as deceased. I’m sorry.”

Dean kept his eyes trained on his stats, far too conscious of his breathing. “Don’t be. I was little when it happened. I hardly remember her.”

There was a small uptick on the screen, but he was pleased to see the lie barely registered in his heartbeat.

“I notice you have left quite a few of the questions blank…”

He should have expected this, but the comment caught Dean off guard. He felt his cheeks heating up.

“It’s an awful lot of questions, I know.” Missouri’s laughed was rich and warm and she didn’t seem at all upset by his failure.. “Especially those of us who don’t like forms. Although sometimes there’s other reasons…” Her words trailed off.

“Would you mind if I asked you the questions and you just answered them orally?”

Dean nodded, his stomach still knotted with anxiety. Maybe this was what prompted him to offer, “I don’t read really well…”

Missouri smiled at him then, it was genuine, sans pity, and it dulled the sharp edge of his shame.

“Well, trust me, Mr. Wesson. You’re not the first.

“Has it always been that way?”

Dean wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but there was something about Missouri that made his unease abate. He surprised himself by offering that he’d never been good at school and had now dropped out.

The woman took the information without judgement, just asked him a couple more things about his reading, how school had been for him. It felt more like small talk than an interview and pretty soon Dean stopped watching his stats.

Then, before he knew it, they had cleared the rest of the questions. At some point too, though he barely remembered it, he’d offered Missouri to call him “Dane.”

“Thank you, Dane,” I’m going to tabulate your questionnaire and find out where Tiffany is with your blood work. I should only be about ten minutes, so why don’t you just settle in and relax for a bit.”

The urge to flee hadn’t left him entirely, but at this point everything had been done, so it seemed stupid not to get the results. Dean leaned back into his chair, his eyes traveling over the room. It only took a couple minutes for his lids to get heavy. He closed his eyes and promised himself he just rest them for a tic.

Soon he was softly snoring.

_____________________________

The sound of the door woke Dean. He’d nodded off where he’d sat, waiting. 

John stomped into the trailer throwing his stuff down just inside the door and marched up to the table.

“Well?”

At the demand Dean pushed the manila envelope holding his designation certificate across the scratched formica. He pulled his trembling hand back as John snatched the envelope up.

Looking down Dean rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He had no idea how he’d managed to drift off, but he was glad he had, otherwise his expression might have given him away. He thought he might puke hearing the paper of his certificate slide out.

“What’s this?”

Unable to read John’s tone, Dean glanced cautiously up. A sick relief filled him when he saw his father’s face split in the widest grin he could ever recall seeing.

“Holy shit, kid! Designation Dominant with Service or Military inclinations indicated!”

It was all Dean could do not to flinch away when John reached out and gave his head a brusque ruffle.

“Can’t believe it!”

The sound of raw disbelief in his dad’s voice stung and Dean couldn’t help himself. “Why the hell not?”

He more than half-expected a slap, but instead his father just stood there staring at him thoughtfully.

“Look at you… Tough guy now, eh?” John snorted but the usual ire was absent in his voice.

“Yeah… Suppose you’re right. You always have been a good little soldier.” Dark eyes dropped down and scanned the certificate once more. John shook his head.

He slid the paper back into the envelope with something akin to reverence and then turned his attention back to Dean.

“You did good, son.” An uncomfortable warmth flooded Dean’s cheeks and his chest at this rare praise.

John stepped away from the table and headed towards the back of the trailer. “I’m gonna shower and then we’re gonna go out.” Just before he reached the narrow hallway that led to the bedrooms and bath he stopped and turned back. “Where’s Sam?”

Dean shrugged his shoulders and bit back a wince. “He’s probably still at his friend’s. He should be home in an hour though.”

“Call him,” John ordered, his voice growing suddenly stern again. “Tell him to get his ass home now. This is cause to celebrate! You’re gonna get a fucking steak dinner this birthday.”

With that, he disappeared down the hall. Within moments the trailer filled with the sound of the shower running and John bellowing out AC/DC’s “Who Made Who” off key.

For a full minute Dean remained frozen in his spot at the table, his eyes fixed on the hallway. He more than half-expected his father to suddenly stop singing and come charging back out and beat him for his ruse.

When this didn’t happen his gaze finally shifted back to the envelope. It had taken him a couple hours to satisfactorily forge the certificate and he’d almost run out of the blank ones he’d stolen from the center in his flight from it.

He still couldn’t believe his father had bought it. A wave of tension-induced nausea washed over him.

Dean pushed away from the table and ran to the kitchen sink. Hanging his head over it, he turned the tap on low so as not to shift the temperature of John’s shower and quietly vomited. Not that there was much of anything in his stomach, he’d chucked pretty much everything out earlier at the clinic not long after Missouri had come back with his true designation:

_Non Sexual Little with Submissive/ Caretaking inclinations indicated._

_______________________

Dean had tried to beg off of going out, petitioning his father they order in a pizza instead. But John was set on them having steak, so they ended up in the car on their way to some steakhouse he knew.

There were two reasons Dean had tried to get them to stay home, first he hardly felt like he could eat anything, his stomach aching fiercely with all the knots in it. Second, after fleeing the center with his stolen documents, he wasn’t sure whether the cops would be on the lookout for him or not.

_Non Sexual Little with Submissive/ Caretaking inclinations indicated._

Sitting shotgun next to John in the Impala on their way to the restaurant, Sam pouting in the back, these words echoed over and over in Dean’s mind. He still couldn’t believe this was his true designation. There had to have been a mistake. At worst he thought he might be declared a submissive… but this...

He flashed back to the moment Missouri had returned with his results. Looking up from his drowsing to see her smiling face had filled him with such relief.

At least until she started talking.

“Dane, this is a rare designation. Oh, you’re, so special sweetheart.” Missouri continued to beam throughout telling Dean of his test results.

_Non Sexual Little with Submissive/ Caretaking Inclinations Indicated._

The warmth that Missouri’s smile and cheery tone had originally filled him with fled, icewater flooded his core in its wake. Dean had literally felt the blood leave his face as the consultant’s words sunk in.

_“There are so many mommy and daddy doms who are going to want you to pick them. You’re designation and inclinations make you so desirable, especially with the caretaking added in… So unusual in a little, but this makes you the perfect big brother for mommy and daddy doms who want to have a big family…_

_“Now at seventeen, I’m sure you’ve experienced numerous mini-regressions already, but your full presentation regression should hit you  anytime now. Actually I can’t believe it hasn’t happened already. But then some of the brightest flowers bloom late, don’t they?” Missouri had chuckled and winked at him when she said this._

_“Anyway, with this coming on we’re going to want to make sure you have good support at home for your transition. Or try and get you into a Little’s acclimation center as soon as possible…_

_"If your daddy is working a lot, like you indicated, that might be best…” Missouri’s words had trailed of when the computer in the room started beeping. On the screen, Dean's stats, heart rate and blood pressure, had gone off the rails._

At this point Dean shoved the memory into one of his mental boxes and sat on it, not wanting to relive the humiliation of his panic attack, his subsequent puking, or how good Missouri’s (who’d turned out to be a mama dom) comforting felt.

Denial was still raging hard in the forefront of his consciousness, but behind this he knew what the consultant had told him was true. As Missouri had gone over all the earmarks of a Little’s presentation, once he’d calmed down a bit, so many of the things that had troubled him over the past year suddenly made sense.

His unexplained spacing out at odd times, his increased difficulty reading and writing, other losses in coordination. These were some of the “mini-regressions” the consultant had mentioned. And his body’s move towards “littleness” explained the drop in his weight (and his height), why he wasn’t getting erections anymore…

The fact his relatively newly acquired body hair had seemed to be thinning too was no longer just a fearful imagining. Dean understood it was true now and only going to get worse, as Missouri had explained that as a Nonsexual Little his bloodwork had shown his testosterone levels were dropping and would continue to, until they were back to whatever age level his Little body came to rest at..

Terrified at what this age might turn out to be, Dean’s hand slipped into his pocket automatically reaching for his rabbit’s foot. At the brush of fingers against fur, he cursed.

Even this… his need for a comfort object, his desire for soft clothes and blankets. His thoughts drifted to the teddy bear Sam had given him last year, stuffed in the bottom of his duffle bag. His eyes glanced at his bandaged thumb.

_It’s why I can’t keep my fucking fingers out of my mouth..._

A black maw of fear opened up in his chest at implications of this, of how young he might age down to in the end, of how completely helpless he could be, dependent on the mercy of others.

Once at the restaurant and out of the car, Dean followed John inside in a daze. Sam came after them, fast on his heels and slid into the booth next to him. His younger brother had been remarkably quiet ever since he’d shown back up at the trailer. Even now, after the waitress had taken their drink orders, Sam sat silently regarding him, a strange look on his face.

“Why don’t you take a fucking picture, Sammy?” Dean hissed. He grit his teeth as soon as the words left his mouth realizing how childish he sounded.

But the open wound filling his ribcage remained, while across the table their dad had just finished crowing about the reason for his family’s outing to the waitress and was now flirting with the thirty-something sub. And Dean sure as hell didn’t need Sam’s side eye adding to his misery.

Sam’s fox-eyes widened at the rebuke and color flooded his cheeks making his bruised one darker. “Sorry,” he mumbled picking up his menu. “I guess I just can’t believe it.”

“Jesus, you sound like dad. Why the hell is it so hard to...” Dean was cut off before he finished his outraged whisper.

“What?” Sam shook his head in confusion. “No, I mean, it’s not just that you’re not a Daddy. Service Dom fits you too, and Military too, I guess.

"It’s just... I suppose I thought once you were designated you’d look different somehow. But you don’t.” Sam snorted, “you just look like the same old pain in the ass, Dean.”

These words not only gave Dean his first smile of his terrible day but they gave him a sliver of hope too. Sam was right. He didn’t look so different, yet. And as long as he could keep up appearances maybe he’d be okay.

_As long as I can keep my presentation regression at bay._

But there had to be ways around that. Right? Dean realized if he could figure this out, he could maybe even stick to his original plan. If his forgery was enough to fool his dad, who was to say he might not be able to take his new charade further?

“What are you two girls gossiping about?”

“Nothing, sir” Dean offered automatically at his dad’s growl. He hoped he sounded like a soldier when he answered and not like a sub.

He dropped his gaze and scanned the menu, his eyes inexorably drifting to the “Little Appetites” section for Kids and “Other Small Ones.” Although he knew it was going to be a struggle to eat anything right now, the pictures showing these selections appealed to him far more than a steak.

_“As your full regression nears, Dean, you’re going to find a lot of things shifting. Your going to feel more emotional, more tired, your attention span will shorten. We’ve talked about how your sex drive will diminish but your other appetites will change too. You’re not going to want ‘grown up’ things as much. For example you’ll crave soft foods, simple flavors. Your body will have adverse and exaggerated reactions to other things like sugar and alcohol…”_

Dean considered the staples of his current diet: oatmeal, applesauce, sandwiches, macaroni, hamburger, green beans. His already heavy stomach continued to sink.

“Goddamn it.”

Dean’s head shot up at his father’s exclamation and his gaze followed the direction of John’s glare. Two couples had come in, one pair had an actual toddler, but both also were pushing modified strollers into the family dining area where they were seated that each contained a Little. The way the Littles were dressed and secured in their rigs indicated they weren’t much “older” than the true babe in arms.

“Perfectly good way to ruin a meal. Having to watch those freaks eat,” John snapped, watching the parental doms reconfigure the elaborate strollers into highchairs. His voice was loud enough that the diners at the nearest table turned towards him frowning.

He ignored their disapproving looks and continued,“How am I supposed to enjoy my meal next to a couple slobbering piglets? Bet they’ll start squalling too before long.”

John’s dark eyes blazed with disgust. He turned his attention back to his sons, his manner taking on his characteristic lecture mode. “Used to be folks kept that shit at home where it belonged. Pets too. Fucking progressives… with all their equal rights bullshit.”

“We could ask for another table,” Dean offered this quietly, not wanting his dad to cause more of a scene, grateful there weren’t any other Littles in their section.

Sam, however, snorted at their father’s words. John’s eyes grew dangerously narrow at this but it didn’t stop his youngest son from speaking.

“Right, Dad.” Sam met John’s gaze. “Those same progressives’ ‘equal rights bullshit’ as you call it, made for the expansion and shift of your designation’s title from Sadist Dom to Power Dom, to be more inclusive and help guys like you from being discriminated against in the workforce.”

He pushed his menu away. “Or did you forget that?”

Seeing the rage on John’s face at Sam’s backtalk made Dean’s chest threaten to collapse. He jumped in as best he could before either his father or his little brother exploded.

“Please, Dad... Sammy... stand down…. It’s my birthday. I just want to eat a steak in peace, not referee WWIII.”

Sam had the decency to look slightly ashamed, but John’s glare remained murderous. Dean thanked god they were in public.

“You’ve got a smart mouth to go with that fat, know-it-all brain of yours, Sam. But I recommend you fucking watch it. I’m only giving you a pass right now because this here is supposed to be about Dean.

“I swear to god though, you keep it up and as soon as we’re in the car I’m gonna make sure your cheeks match. All four of them.”

Dean watched his little brother’s eyes widen and his hand automatically rise to brush his bruise. He could tell Sam was going to bolt, so he set his hand on a skinny thigh and begged Sam with his eyes. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief when his brother stiffened but stayed.

Their father caught this interaction and clearly attributed it to Dean’s newly declared Dom-ness. “Better yet, maybe I’ll let Dean use the gift I gave him on you himself when we get home.”

While this made Dean pale, some of the tension drained from John’s body once he’d said it and the fire in his eyes cooled long enough for the returned waitress to take their meal orders.

______________________

Thankfully the stalemate held. Their meal was fairly quiet. John asked Dean numerous questions about his afternoon at the center. Fortunately, Dean had expected this and had practiced a list of simple, easy to remember responses. Once he got through enough of these to satisfy he was able to shift the conversation by asking about his Dad’s work.

John was a natural storyteller and a bit of a blowhard when it came to his “hunting” so it didn’t take much to get him going. Dean feigned interest as he fought to choke down his steak. Sam sat sullen next to him wearing bitchface #56 while he poked at his chicken-filled Ceasar salad.

_Caretaking inclinations…_

The words popped into Dean’s mind as he asked John another careful question all the while hyper-aware of the unhappy Sam beside him. His eyes unconsciously slipped over to the table where the Littles, who’d been remarkably well behaved, were happily eating. Their parents, one same sex pair of Mommy Doms and a matching pair of well-groomed Daddies, were amicably chatting as they tended to them.

One of the Mommies fed the real toddler, while the other spoon fed mashed potatoes to their other “babe” with a smile. The second Little sat between her Daddies who took turns feeding her little bites and wiping her softly giggling mouth. All the parents were clearly smitten with their small fry, every action doting.

Something twisted hot inside Dean, wondering what it would be like to be the object of such affections. To just sit back and let someone take care of him. His eyes tracked the raw love in the Littles’ eyes for their doms.

_How would it be to just let someone else take control for a while?… Someone trustworthy._

His stomach lurched with sickening, sudden need and Dean felt like he might burst into tears right there.

“Uh… Excuse me, sir.” He pushed back from the table and nudged Sam’s knee. “Permission to be excused for a sec?” He forced a heartiness into his voice he didn’t feel. “I gotta go make room for dessert, if you know what I mean?”

John cut off the story he was telling and laughed. “At ease, soldier… Permission granted.” This sort of militaristic exchange wasn’t uncommon if their household but with Dean’s new designation, the was an unexpected warmth in his father’s voice.

As he walked to the restrooms Dean was all too aware of just how much he didn’t want to lose that happy tone. This just made his stomach hurt worse. So much so he barely made it into the stall before losing the fifteen dollar steak he’d just eaten.

Once he’d managed to recompose himself, Dean stepped up to the sinks to wash his hands and splash some water on his face. He’d just finished doing this when Sam pushed into the bathroom.

“I don’t know how you can stand listening to that ass,” Sam muttered as he moved over to the urinals and unzipped. “I swear I couldn’t handle staying there with him one more second without you running interference.”

Dean pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and leaned back against the counter, carefully. He didn’t say anything. Partly because he was too wrung out to answer, but he also knew when Sam got like this sometimes the best tack was just to let him bitch himself out of a boil.

Sam didn’t say anything more, however, until after he’d finished pissing and was washing his hands. He looked up at Dean in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.

“Mr. Bass asked me about my cheek.” Sam dropped his head down, his long hair hiding the bruise. “I told him you and I were roughhousing and I fell against the coffee table.” Large hands gripped the edge of the counter. “He didn’t push after that, but I don’t think he bought it either.”

Dean watched Sam’s knuckles flex with a growing sense of dread. “He told me I could come live with them for a while if I wanted to.”

Sam straightened and turned to mirror Dean’s posture, leaning against the counter. Neither brother looked at each other as he continued.

“I do. I want to Dean. When we get home tonight, I don’t care if that asshole beats me. I’m packing up and leaving.

“I’m sorry I just can’t deal with his shit any more. You’ll be okay though. I mean, he likes you better at least. You’re his ‘soldier’ after all. More so now, even.”

The urge to bawl beaten into submission after puking up his dinner in the stall came roaring out of the box Dean had stuffed it into. He swallowed hard. He was so fucking selfish. Of course this would be the very best things for Sam. A blessing, really.

But the idea of life without his little brother didn’t seem possible.

“I’m getting emancipated.”

“What?!”

The words had come out so much smaller sounding than Dean intended. Even so, he could still barely raise his voice above a whisper when he repeated them.

“I’m getting emancipated, Sammy. Like you said I should last year. Now that I’m designated.” It was so hard, stuttering these words out. Dean knew now what he was feeling was the struggle of a submissive going against his dom. Uttering these words, even at a barely audible level, was exhausting.

“Just hold on with me until he leaves again. As soon as he does… I’ll… I’ll file the papers. Petition to get guardianship too.

“Got a job offer the other day… more permanent, more money… we can move away. Get a place he won’t know about…”

What little air Dean had left in his lungs was punched out of him when Sam unexpectedly grabbed his upper arms and shoved him back against the papertowel dispenser. All the welts on his back were set ablaze by the impact.

“Fuck, Sam!’ He shouted in pain as soon as he could draw a breath. 

He was going to push back, but the look on Sam’s face stopped him cold: he’d never seen his little brother’s face so fierce, or so desperate.

“Don’t fuck with me, Dean.” Sam’s eyes filled with tears. One broke free and rolled down his bruised cheek. “Please…" His voice was raw as he begged.

“I mean it. Please don’t fuck with me. Don’t tell me you’re gonna do this if you don’t mean it 100%. I swear to god… I need to get away from him so bad…

“I don’t think I could take it if you went back on this.”

It was only Sam’s tears that held Dean’s own at bay.  He shook the big moose paws off his shoulders and growled with a confidence he in no way felt.

“Yeah. I mean it. Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

The look of hope, the happiness that lit Sam’s tear-filled eyes was more than Dean could stand to look at. He turned to grab a handful of paper towels and thrust them at his little brother, who, to his horror, was actually crying harder now.

“Come on, Samatha. Clean yourself up. We need to get back out there before Dad starts tearing the place apart.”

Sam took the towels with a grateful “Shut up, Jerk.” And turned to wash away his tears.

_____________________________

Back at the table John had ordered everyone dessert. There was pie at every place as he greeted them with a “What the hell took you ladies so long?”

“There was a cute girl in the hall…” Dean’s lie as he slid into the booth only made him slightly uneasy. “And Sam here didn’t want to come back without me.” He added for good measure, "guess that’s a sub thing.”

John’s eyes lit with delighted humor at this. Even more so when Sam didn’t counter it for once. Just shrugged and lit into his cherry pie with more enthusiasm than he’d shown for anything so far that evening.

The rest of their meal went remarkably without incident. If anything, Dean had to pinch Sam’s thigh once or twice to remind the idiot not to act so fucking happy. Fortunately, that seemed to work okay and by the time John was polishing off his last cup of coffee, Sam had slipped from giddy to so drowsy he could hardly keep his eyes open.

“Why don’t you get Samuel tucked into Baby, Dean, while I take care of the bill.”

Dean followed his dad’s directions without comment. Though Sam was so sleepy, he thought he might actually have to throw him over his shoulder and carry him at one point before they finally made it to the car and he was able to unceremoniously dump his brother’s bony ass in the backseat.

The ride home was peaceful with Sam snoring softly in the back and John’s rock tunes playing lowly on the radio. Dean was grateful for the quiet. More than exhausted himself from all the drama of his day, he could hardly wait to crawl into his bed.

He wanted nothing more in the world than to close his eyes and finally put this day behind him.

But it seemed the shittiest day of his life wasn’t over yet.

When they pulled up at the trailer and he went to extricate Sam from Baby’s backseat, his father stopped him.

“Leave him there, Son.”

Dean turned to John, confused at the order only to watch his father pull a prescription bottle from his pocket. John's grin was tight as he rattled the pills inside. “I spiked his pie. Ol’ Sam there is gonna be out for eight hours at least.”

He frowned then, clearly unhappy with whatever expression had settled on Dean’s face at this revelation.

“Hated to do it, Dean. But you saw how he was tonight. Fucking little punk. Ready to cause trouble. Bout time Sam learned his place. Even more now he’s got two doms to respect.

“And I didn’t want a bunch of guff from him at my news. Or you, knowing how attached to him you are.”

The chocolate pie Dean had for dessert lay like lead in his stomach. “What news?” he asked carefully.

“Well…” John rubbed the back of his neck. “We had another reason to celebrate tonight! Got a job offer with a real good bounty outfit in Kansas today because of some work I’d done recently.”

“Kansas?”

“Yep. Start with them in three days. So we’re moving. _Tonight._ ”

This certainly wasn’t the first unexpected relocation Dean had been through with his dad, but they’d been living here for a good bit, and Sam was so settled. He thought about his own new job offer. About what this new move meant to his plans.

Guilt crashed over him as he glanced at Sam’s knocked out form through one of Baby’s windows.

_I should have told him to run in the bathroom. Made him go right then..._

“But that’s not all.” John came over and draped a thick arm over Dean’s shoulders, not yet through with all his surprises for the night.

“I didn’t want to say anything until you got your papers… But now I know. You’re gonna go to work with me, Dean.”

John took his son’s stunned silence as awe, not the horror Dean felt. Chuckling, he continued with a wave of his free arm in front of him like he was painting a picture.

“You and me. I’m gonna train you up proper. Shit, you know more already than half the idiot’s doing this stuff I know of. You just need some practice.

“And this outfit… Well, the owner wants to retire in a couple years. And I have been working my ass off, saving up what I make… I can buy him out. I've already talked to him about it and he's agreed.

“We're gonna open our own family business. Winchester and son… Or sons. You and me the muscle and if Sam gets his shit together, he’ll do most of the research and book work.

“We can get a house of our own. Settle down finally like a real family.”

Dean couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. His whole body had gone numb as John had laid out his plans. While his dad’s voice was the happiest he’d ever heard it since his mom had died, all Dean wanted to do was crumple himself up into a little ball and sob right there in the weedy gravel driveway.

The thought of having to work with John all day, every day... His true designation hanging over him like an ax, ready to fall at any minute.

His eyes shifted away from where they'd been fixed on Sam as a glint of metal flashed in his father’s hand. The prescription bottle had gone back into a pocket of John’s jean jacket and been replaced with a key.

John held it out to him. “This is to Baby… It’s your real birthday present. Now, I’m not giving her to you… Yet… But if we’re gonna be working together you’re gonna need to be mobile. And a badass dom needs a badass ride.”

Knowing what the Impala meant to his dad and how right now he so didn't deserve this, Dean just couldn’t stop the tears this time. He sniffled audibly.  John didn’t berate him like he expected, however, just stood there regarding him silently for a few moments.

When he did speak again his voice was rough. “Glad to see you know what this means, Dean. How much I trust you.” John pushed himself away and headed towards the trailer. “We’re hitting the road in an hour. So just pack the basics. Yours and Sam’s. We’ll get whatever else we need for our new place once we get there.”

The trailer door creaked open and hung there that way. John disappeared inside to assemble his own gear leaving Dean alone in the drive with his unconscious brother.

Dean turned the Impala key over and over in his sweating palm. He could get away right now if he wanted.

His mind turned back to Missouri again, her concern regarding his reaction at his designation. How she’d told him she could take care of him if his home wasn’t safe. That she knew, sadly, that happened sometimes. That she could get him into one of the best acclimation centers with his rare typing, where he’d be protected, cared for, loved.

 _How hard would it be to leave right now? Huh, Dean?_ It was Sam's voice asking the question in his head.

He could slip into Baby this second, drive to the nearest police station or hospital, even. Outside the humiliation of acknowledging what he was, he’d be seen to. Sam could go live with the Bass family then. And John could wash his hands of both of them and go on to his new job, start his new life.

_It could be that easy... Go on... Right now._

Only it wasn’t.

How many times in his life had John told him: A good soldier never abandons his general?

 _Or a baby his Daddy!…_ a tiny voice in his head wailed.

Despite everything John had done to him that day and over the entirety of Dean’s years, the submissive part of himself he’d fought against his whole life coursed through him so strongly at the thought of such disobedience his whole body shook.

Dean pulled his rabbit foot keychain from his pocket and stared at it. Tears coursing down his cheeks, he added the Impala’s key, though it took some time with how bad his fingers trembled.

Once the key was secured, he stuffed this new weight deep into his pocket again where it seemed to burn against the tender flesh of his thigh.

“Fuck, Sammy… I’m so sorry.” Dean choked as he gave his sleeping brother one last tear blurred glance.

“I hope to god you’ll forgive me someday.”

With that, knowing he was probably already about ten minutes into his dad’s allotted hour, he headed into the trailer to pack before he lost anymore time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor kid can't catch a break. Wonder what Dean's gonna do now. And Sam... He's gonna be so fucking pissed when he wakes up.
> 
> Thanks for your patient waiting. Hope you enjoyed the new chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious about where this is going, each succeeding chapter will be a snapshot of Dean's advancing birthdays (one chapter per year) up to his twenty-first. They'll follow his struggles as he navigates his designation. 
> 
> Then, in his 21st year, his life will change dramatically.
> 
> I guess, what I am really doing is warning you that there will be at least five more chapters of significant angst.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
